I'm sorry but you cannot escape the fact that pro-sport is about money. Paying players costs money you can't pay them promises, as Bob Dylan said "you can't eat applause for breakfast".

Of course pro sport is about money. Who said it wasn't. Of course players will need paying and paying well.As a game we have to decide whether its ALL about money or a mixture of financial competence, development of the talent pool and inclusion. Laissez faire vs the market runs everything.If money runs everything then we have greed and in RL we wiil have a very small peak of the pyramid and sand underneath. I don't want RL to be that structure/model - how exiting will an 8 team SL be and then little else? To me that would also end the Challenge Cup and semi pro RL. It may wholly satisfy Sky and a smaller portion of the RL fraternity, but who else.

On another point - SL clubs are offloading players. Do some of them now have room on the salary cap, or further room if they weren't spending the cap? What will they do with that potential available cap - more average Aussie sand Kolpaks?

You know full well why London are in. It's because places like Oldham & Keighley don't have enough of an amateur junior base.

Wigan, Saints, Leeds, Bradford biggest fanbases in the Rugby League.

When did Oldham last get 11,671 as an average.

Last time I looked the England Captain and man of the match in the grand final came from Oldham junior rugby. Also, we've been through this before but the argument just dosn't get through to you.The growth of player production in London has nothing to do with London broncos. All the major action is in the North and South East of london, far, far away from Twickenham. Its impetus is from the likes of South London Storm, Greenwich Admirals and Medway for example. It';s helped along by RFL fjunded development officers. Did you see the article about the outstanding growth of RL in East London in the last RLW magasine. The Broncos weren't mentioned once.

Wigan, Saints, Leeds and Bradford eh, nothing like going to the top of the tree attendancewise. What about a comparison with Salford, Castleford, London, Widnes, Hull KR and yes , even Wakefield or Crusaders who they were quite willing to keep in SL until they voluntarily exited stage left. Your always predictable rush to the top always eliminates the middle ground and stultifies the argument with unrealistic comparisons.

Can't agree.That would be great final and a great outcome for the game, ...

Unless of course it were say, just picking clubs at random...Oldham V Keighley. That would surely reinforce our game as a small town sport in the north of England

Keighley did play Oldham in a grand final just two years ago and the attendance was reasonable for that level of competiton. The Oldham v Widnes game a few seasons ago was part of combined 20,000 plus attendance at Headingley, more than Leeds get on a regular basis.

London v Toulouse could be played at Hemel and not fill the ground. The RFL would have a collective stroke if that final happened. They were upset when Catalans were a Cup finalists even though their opponent that day was a top SL team from the heartlands.

I am not saying that such a final would be bad, merely that there are current potential SL finals that would be worse attendancewise than should an Oldham or Leigh or Halifax or whomever eventually rise to SL level and enter the fray.

Anyway with a big new stadium and 8,000 crowds already I suspect he feels he may be able to manage to keep Wakefield solvent and compete in SL.

Now ask yourself this now you know the facts.

Could the likes of Mr. Glover of Mr. "Two Restraunts" Khan make Oldham a Superleague club???

Careful you don't become a naysayer yourself

The resurgence at Wakefield is great. Nobody is disputing that. The point is that you would deny that any other club could ever make such a renaissance.

Secondly, how many times do you have to be told. Oldham is light years away from being A SL club. They need to get to CC from CC1, increase their spectator numbers, find lower level investment to stabilise the club ( which they did previously but it didn't work out ) and then start to address their stadium issues. This might take years.

The point at issue is that Oldham as a town is of sufficient size and in a geographical location on the Eastern side of Manchester whereby it could sustain a SL club.

If they stabilise and achieve all the goals I have listed then who knows what investors or speculators are out there who might take a chance on financing Oldham. Catalans came from nowhere to SL prominence. They had crowd issues, they had stadium issues but they got it done.

Hull KR and Hudddersfield also. You can never say never and if you can, then you shouldn't. the words "Ring " and Fenced" should not be in the RL vocabulary.

We are talking about traditional areas like they will never ever be able to recover the interest in Rugby League football again and then in the next breath talk about developing new areas with potential, surely if the Rugby Football League had put as much effort into your Oldhams etc these areas could be flourishing again.

I know the bigger picture at present is to have a limited number of elite clubs dotted about the country, but is this system the best system for the game to survive especially when you look at how many new areas have failed.

Carlsberg don't do Soldiers, but if they did, they would probably be Brits.

Of course Oldham could support a superleague club with the right financial structures in place and a decent ground. How to achieve this is the issue. They have a big enough catchment area in my opinion to build crowds. All of this takes time, perseverance, dedication and patience from a lot of people.

I used to like going to the Watersheddings, after a few a few pints in Delph. Happy days. It would be good to see Oldham progressing again.

Look at the area around Boundary Park, there is a new B&Q, car show room and pub that was the first phase of development. and behind that stands Clayton Playing Fields that was meant to be redevoloped. But because there was a covenant on it it needed a special vote. There was a campaign led by somelocal people, who after the vote took the case to court and had the area declared a village green!?????? So it can never be developed.

Oldham v Widnes was actually in 2001 at Spotland with a crowd of about 9000. It was Oldham v Featherstone that was at Headingley. Sorry to be a smart ######.

That's quite alright. I thought I might have been wrong when I typed it but I am marooned in an office with no reference books.However your correction merely re inforces my original point which was that, even at the lower tier level, succesful teams, even an Oldham team, can draw decent crowds so what might happen if such fixtures were ever replicated in SL. 9,000 at Spotland is way more than anything Widnes got this season in SL.

Three decent amateur clubs, four oldham lads playing in SL, last time out in SL 3600 fans........

Give over......

How many decent amateur teams in Bradford, not many or around Headingley, none. 3,600 as has already been pointed out was in an era when most SL crowds were very low so the 3,600 today would probably be double that, from visiting fans alone you would get quite a few.

Bradford have gone fron 200, 2nd Div to 5,000, div one champions, to 15,000, SL champions to 8,000 SL strugglers, TO 11,000, cheap season tickets, to ???? a struggling re formed team next season.

So Oldham, in the future, if they get everything sorted out could well achieve respectable attendances. Things are cyclical and are not always down, down, down to suit your arguments.

Seeing as most of the huddled masses are still in the North and since Sky cannot be seen in Toulouse, that wouod be a toss up.

And always will be if peoples horizons are restricted to thinking that Keighley V Oldham would be more attractive than London V Toulouse

In fact, the TV viewer demographic is far from parochial. Sky is available in Toulouse. see for example: http://www.insatinte...php?CountryID=2 (For six years l lived 200 miles north of Toulouse as the crow flies and had perfectly good Sky coverage) but that is not the point.

See Astra footprint

s

A GF between two major cities, one in each country would radically change the way the game is treated in France and French TV coverage would be pretty nigh certain. Such a game would attract new fans, new viewers, new sponsors, new advertisers, new media attention.

I know that is not what everyone wants, but hey ho, that's why they make Airbus in Toulouse and not in Keighley.

The point is, as has been shown by the Heineken Cup, that international competition is more popular than parochial competition, which makes it more attractive to, more saleable to advertisers and sponsors.

Keighley V Oldham might attract advertising from Tubigrip and the Queens Tandoori Takeaway and viewer from as far away as, well Keighley and ..er Oldham whereas a Grand Final between London and Toulouse would have a far bigger market to go at - The combined population of London and Toulouse is 12 million, 20 times the combined population of Keighley and Oldham

And always will be if peoples horizons are restricted to thinking that Keighley V Oldham would be more attractive than London V Toulouse

In fact, the TV viewer demographic is far from parochial. Sky is available in Toulouse. see for example: http://www.insatinte...php?CountryID=2 (For six years l lived 200 miles north of Toulouse as the crow flies and had perfectly good Sky coverage) but that is not the point.

See Astra footprint

s

A GF between two major cities, one in each country would radically change the way the game is treated in France and French TV coverage would be pretty nigh certain. Such a game would attract new fans, new viewers, new sponsors, new advertisers, new media attention.

I know that is not what everyone wants, but hey ho, that's why they make Airbus in Toulouse and not in Keighley.

The point is, as has been shown by the Heineken Cup, that international competition is more popular than parochial competition, which makes it more attractive to, more saleable to advertisers and sponsors.

Keighley V Oldham might attract advertising from Tubigrip and the Queens Tandoori Takeaway and viewer from as far away as, well Keighley and ..er Oldham whereas a Grand Final between London and Toulouse would have a far bigger market to go at - The combined population of London and Toulouse is 12 million, 20 times the combined population of Keighley and Oldham

I don't think I said that Oldham v keighley would be more attractive a fixture than London V Toulouse. I said London v Toulouse would be a nightmare for the league grand final What do you estimate the attendance at such a game would be. I would think if you got 30,000 you would be extremely lucky as opposed to 70,000 at a northern baswed grand final.

I don't think the relative size of London or Toulouse is relevant either given the popularity of soccer in one and RU and soccer in the other. I think any prospectrive sponsors who had done their homewrok would know that too.

Do you not think aHheineken cup final between Northampton and Gloucester would draw just as well as one involving some Italian team and say Connaught.

Having siad that the RU has developed the Heineken cup into a great competition even though the standard of play is the ususal RU garbage. We should ook to emulate some of that geographical and multi country spread but we are a long ways off.Ffor now London V Toulouse grand final would be the leagues' worst nightmare.

Clearly not today, no. To get to the Grand Final Toulouse would have to develop, grow, improve, and achieve merely to get into SuperLeague. The earliest they could even qualify would be 2015 and they may not succeed even then. But maybe,maybe they could be in by 2018. Give them three years to get to the playoffs and we are talking 2020

Ditto London. They'd have to survive the next licencing round and then develop, grow, improve, and achieve a playoff position. So, for both clubs to get to the GF then they'd be pretty successful and attractive clubs and their following would reflect that. a GF at Wembley or the Stade de France would beckon.

Of course, if both clubs had developed in the way that Keighley and Oldham have developed over even the last 10 years.......

Your correction merely re inforces my original point which was that, even at the lower tier level, succesful teams, even an Oldham team, can draw decent crowds so what might happen if such fixtures were ever replicated in SL. 9,000 at Spotland is way more than anything Widnes got this season in SL.

This is one of the biggest contrivances I have ever seen written by a supposedly serious observer of the game.

I was at the first game where Oldham played Featherstone because I go to grand finals, yes there were Oldham fans but the crowd didn't get to 20,000 until Castleford and Widnes took the stage. There were neutrals there and Oldham at the time were the worst supported club of the four, their average attendance being 1,100 that season.

The spotland game was also a final with plenty of neutrals and of course Widnes supplied the bulk of the crowd. I wouldn't be suprised if 3-4,000 Oldham fans had made the short journey that day but to argue along either of these lines is just plain silly.I think Hetherington said Leeds took 20,000 plus fans to Old Trafford - seems thousands of fans like a good final but aren't even interested in regular SL rounds.

So lets take 500 oldham fans off the 4,000 at Spotland as people who only go to the biggest matches and what do you have on a LOGICAL argument. 3,500 which is what they used to get in Superleague.

Here's the other argument that defied logic, that down in Tameside there's 200,000 fans to go at. It's a bit like the old Keighley argument where they were going to draw fans from Bingley, Shipley, Baildon, Nelson, Colne, Burnley etc, or the Leigh arument where if they can just get the Bolton people going to LSV, oh and what about Sheffield's potential - Big city and Rotherham and Chesterfield just down the road. Saints are aiming for 30,000 fans next year as they are next to Liverpool and Broncos will have to play out of twickenham next year as London has a population of millions.

There's this gross assumption that just because we are interested in a minority sport, that people who have no affinity at all with the game, and are culturally wrapped up in Soccer will want to go watch a struggling Keighley or a struggling Oldham or a struggling Sheffield in Superleague.

When Superleague started the bottom half clubs averages 4,500 fans

Last year the bottom clubs averaged 5,000 fans.

You cannot run competitive Superleague clubs on crowds like that.

You cannot debate the organisation and development of the game on contrivances.